|
|
| Plot Summary of Before Night Falls |
|---|
""Before Night Falls" charts Arenas' Journey from the days of his youth in the poverty stricken countrysideto the nights of pain he endured under the Castro Regime. The reader is immediately impressed at this man's determination to simply be who he is, at any cost- and those costs were very high. He lost his friends to an informer culture, his freedom to a police state simply for expressing himself- he suffered for years, and survived AIDs to write this book. "Before Night Falls" is Arenas' damning insight into the barbarity of the police state. Through him we see how easily freedoms can be taken away; that when they are, we must fight for them. He wrote even when death was closing around him, and that gives the reader hope,if not a chill that his talent brought him to that extreme.
"
Stephen Kinsella, Resident Scholar
|
"A Cuban writer, Reinaldo Arenas, writes about his life under the persecution from Fidel Castro's dictatorship in 'Before Night Falls.' Arenas describes how he made the most out of life in a repressive state and how his contemporaries lived in a marginal society with the aid of dreams and magical realism. Reinaldo Arenas lived out his life exiled in the United States. "
Daniel Luera-Sierra, Resident Scholar
|
|
| Review Analysis of Before Night Falls |
|---|
|
Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
|
|
Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- thoughtful
Time/era of story
- 1960's-1970's
Political/social activism
Yes
Plotlet:
- surviving repressive dictatorship
Conflict:
- Russian commies!
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- writer
Age:
- 40's-50's
Eccentric/Mental
Yes
Eccentric:
- eccentric
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Hispanic/Latinic
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
- Genius
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- society
Profession/status:
- dictator
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- throughout most of the book.
How sensitive is this character?
- mean, arrogant
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 4 ()
The Americas (not US):
Yes
The Americas:
- The Caribbean
Island?
Yes
Island:
- Caribbean Islands
Misc setting
- prison
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- very explicit references to deaths and torture
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- touching of anatomy
- orgies
- actual description of hetero sex
- descript. of nude males (the big P)
- male homosexuals doing their thing
Lot of foul language?
Yes
Unusual Style:
- a lot of stream of consciousness
- written like a journal/diary/letters
Amount of dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
|
|
|
Click here for more information about this book
Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
Use our site!
17 FREE Sci-Fi Ebooks!
FREE "How to be happy" Ebook!
Feedback
Most recent discussions:
General Book Talk
Book writing discussion
Off-topic message board
Norah Lofts
12:50:53 AM
Suzanne Weyn
4:47:34 PM
Wilma Counts
1:23:32 PM
George W. Bush
5:33:46 PM
Kin Platt
12:58:29 AM
Anonymous
12:47:34 PM
Lilian Jackson Braun
10:05:52 PM
Jane Rubino
10:04:38 PM
LaVyrle Spencer
10:04:00 PM
G.A. McKevett
10:03:31 PM
David Williams
10:03:01 PM
Steven Pressfield
10:02:30 PM
Jeanette Walls
10:00:19 PM
Darryl Ponicsan
9:59:27 PM
Ann Rinaldi
9:58:30 PM
R.L. Stine
9:57:34 PM
Geoffrey Huntington
9:57:14 PM
Betty Mahmoody
9:56:38 PM
Deric Longden
9:56:11 PM
Mary Downing Hahn
9:55:48 PM
More message boards
|
